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UNDER THE OLD ELM 
AND OTHER POEMS 

BY I 

jl JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

AND 

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston : 4 Park Street 

New York: h East 17TH Street 

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PRICE FIFTEEN CENTS 



Writings of James Russell Lowell. 




It is not necessary to say that Lowell is the first poet of the time 
or of the country, although it would be possible to maintain that 
proposition with strong reasons ; but it will be conceded, we think, 
by most who have the capacity of appreciating poetic genius, that 
in some of his strains he reaches a note as lofty and clear and pure 
as any this generation has produced, and has written what will have 
long life in the world, and be hoarded by the wise as treasures of 
thought and expression. Nature endowed him with a rare quality 
of imagination, a most fertile fancy, a wonderful wit, and a nice 
sense of melody. All these gifts have been refined by culture that 
was at once generous and severe, and directed by aims which en- 
nobled all his efforts. — -Boston Advertiser. \ 

Continued on inside of Last Cover. 



r> ««>. ^ 



^ 3Dl)c ISitjcraiDc JLiterature Series ^ ^ 



UNDER THE OLD ELM, AND 
OTHER POEMS 



BY 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



WITH NOTES 

AND 

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 




IF Co* 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street 

1885 



f5^^^^^ 



CONTENTS. . N^ 



%6 



6 

PAGE 

Biographical Sketch 3 

Under the Old Elm 7 

Ode read at Concord 23 

Under the Willows 33 

CocHiTUATE Ode . . . .' 47 

The Courtin* 49 

To H. W. Longfellow 53 

Agassiz ' . . 55 



Copyright, 1857, 1866, 1868, 1874, 1876, and 1879, 

By JAMES RUSSELL L0V7ELL, H. 0. HOUGHTON & CO. 

AND HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO. 

Copyright, 1885, 
Bt HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights resened. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

James Russell Lowell was born February 22, 1819, 
at Elmwood, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the house 
which he stUl occupies. His early life was spent in 
Cambridge, and he has sketched many of the scenes in 
it very delightfully in Camhridge Thirty Years Ago, in 
his volmne of Fireside Travels, as well as in his early 
poem. An Indian Summer Reverie. His father was a 
Congregationalist minister of Boston, and the family to 
which he belongs has had a strong representation in 
Massachusetts. His grandfather, John Lowell, was an 
eminent jurist, the Lowell Institute of Boston owes its 
endowment to John Lowell, a cousin of the poet, and 
the city of Lowell was named after Francis Cabot 
Lowell, an uncle, who was one of the first to begin the 
manufacturing of cotton in New England. 

Lowell was a student at Harvard, and was gi'aduated 
in 1838, when he gave a class poem, and in 1841 liis 
first volume of poems, A Year's Life, was published. 
His bent from the beginning was more decidedly literary 
than that of any contemporary American poet. That 
is to say, the history and art of literature divided his 
interest with the production of literature, and he carries 
the unusual gift of rare critical power, joined to hearty, 



4 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

spontaneous creation. It may indeed be guessed that 
the keenness of judgment and incisiveness of wit which 
characterize his examination of literature have some- 
times interfered with his poetic power, and made him 
liable to question his art when he would rather have ex- 
pressed it unchecked. In connection with Robert Carter, 
a litterateur who has lately died, he began, in 1843, the 
publication of The Pioneer, a Literary and Critical 
Magazine, which lived a briUiant life of three months. 
A volume of poetry followed in 1844, and the next year 
he published Conversations on Some of the Old Foets, 
— a book wiiich is now out of print, but interesting as 
marking the enthusiasm of a young scholar, treading a 
way then almost wholly neglected in America, and inti- 
mating a line of thought and study in which he has 
since made most noteworthy ventures. Another series 
of poems followed in 1848, and in the same year The 
Vision of Sir Launfal. Perhaps it was in reaction 
from the marked sentiment of his poetry that he issued 
now a jeu d'esprit, A Fable for Critics, in which he hit 
off, with a rough and ready wit, the characteristics of 
the writers of the day, not forgetting himself in these 
lines : — 

" There is Lowell, who 's striving Parnassus to climb 
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme ; 
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, 
But he can't with that bimdle he has on his shoulders; 
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching ; 
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, 
But he 'd rather by half make a drum of the shell. 
And rattle away till he 's old as Methusalem, 
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem." 

This, of course, is but a half serious portrait of him- 
self, and it touches but a single feature ; others can say 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. O 

better that Lowell's ardent nature showed itself in the 
series of satirical poems which made him famous, The 
Blglow Papers, written in a spirit of indignation and 
fine scorn, when the Mexican War was causing many- 
Americans to blush with shame at the use of the country 
by a class for its own ignoble ends. The true patriot- 
ism which marked these and other of his early poems 
burned with a steady glow in after years, and illumined 
poems of which we shall speak presently. 

After a year and a half spent in travel, Lowell was 
appointed in 1855 to the Belles Lettres professorship, 
lately held at Harvard by Longfellow. When the At- 
lantic Monthly was established in 1857 he was editor, 
and a year or two after relinquishing the post he as- 
sumed part editorship of the North American Review. 
In these two magazines, as also in JPutna.n's Monthli/, 
he published poems, essays, and critical papers, which 
have been gathered into volumes. His prose writings, 
besides the volumes already mentioned, include two se- 
ries of Among my Books, historical and critical studies, 
chiefly in English literature ; and My Study Windows^ 
including, with similar subjects, observations of nature 
and contemporary life. During the war for the Union 
he published a second series of the Blylow Papers, in 
which, with the wit and fun of the earlier series, there 
was mingled a deeper strain of feeling and a larger tone 
of patriotism. The limitations of his style in these 
satires forbade the fullest expression of his thought and 
emotion ; but afterward in a succession of poems, oc- 
casioned by the honors paid to student-soldiers in Cam- 
bridge, the death of Agassiz, and the celebration of 
national anniversaries during the years 1875 and 1876, 
he sang in loftier, more ardent strains. The interest 



6 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

which readers have in Lowell is still divided between 
his rich, abundant prose, and his thoughtful, often pas- 
sionate verse. The sentiment of his early poetry, always 
humane, has been enriched by larger experience ; so that 
the themes which he has lately chosen demand and re- 
ceive a broad treatment, full of sympathy with the most 
generous instincts of the present, and built upon historic 
foundations. 

In 1877 he went to Spain as Minister Plenipoten- 
tiary. In 1880 he was transferred to England as Min- 
ister Plenipotentiary near the Court of St. James. His 
duties as American Minister have not prevented him 
from producing occasional writings, which have chiefly 
been in connection with jDublic events. Notable among 
these are his address at the unveihng of a statue of 
Fielding, and his address on Democracy. 



UNDER THE OLD ELM. 

[Near Cambridge Common stands an old elm, having 
at its base a stone with the inscription, " Under this tree 
Washington fii'st took command of the American Army, 
July 3d, 1775." Upon the one hundredth anniversary 
of this day the citizens of Cambridge held a celebra- 
tion under the tree, and Mr. Lowell read the following 
poem.] 

I. 



Words pass as wind, but where great deeds were done 
A power abides transfused from sire to son : 
The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his ear, 
That tingling through his pulse life-long shall run, 

5 With sure impulsion to keep honor clear, 
When, pointing down, his father whispers, " Here, 
Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely Great, 
Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere. 
Then nameless, now a power and mixed with fate." 

10 Historic town, thou boldest sacred dust, 
Once known to men as pious, learned, just, 
And one memorial pile that dares to last ; 
But Memory greets with reverential kiss 
No spot in all thy circuit sweet as tliis, 

12. Memorial Hall, built by the alumni of Harvard, in memory of those 
who fell in the war for the Union, a buildi:ig of more serious thought than 
any other in Cambridge, and among the few in the country built to endure. 



8 UNDER THE OLD ELM. 

15 Touched by that modest glory as it past, 
O'er which yon ehu hath piously displayed 
These hundred years its monumental shade. 

2. 

Of our swift passage through this scenery 
Of life and death, more durable than we, 

20 What landmark so congenial as a tree 
Repeating its green legend every spring. 
And, with a yearly ring, 
Recording the fair seasons as they flee, 
Type of our brief but still-renewed mortality? 

25 We fall as leaves : the immortal trunk remains, 
Builded with costly juice of hearts and brains 
Gone to the mould now, whither all that be 
Vanish returnless, yet are procreant still 
In human lives to come of good or ill, 

30 And feed unseen the roots of Destiny. 

II. 

1. 

Men's monuments, grown old, forget their names 
They should eternize, but the place 
Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace 
Beyond mere earth ; some sweetness of their fames 

35 Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace. 
Pungent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims. 
That penetrates our lives and heightens them or 

shames. 
This insubstantial world and fleet 
Seems solid for a moment when we stand 

40 On dust ennobled by heroic feet 



UNDER THE OLD ELM. 9 

Once mighty to sustain a tottering land, 

And mighty still such burthen to upbear, 

Nor doomed to tread the path of things that merely 

were : 
Our sense, refined with virtue of the spot, 
45 Across the mists of Lethe's sleej^y stream 
Recalls him, the sole chief without a blot, 
No more a pallid image and a dream, 
But as he dwelt with men decorously supreme. 

2. 

Our grosser minds need this terrestrial hint • 
50 To raise long-buried days from tombs of print : 
" Here stood he," softly we repeat. 
And lo, the statue shrined and still 
In that gray minster-front we call the Past, 
Feels in its frozen veins our pulses thrill, 
65 Breathes living air and mocks at Death's deceit. 
It warms, it stirs, comes down to us at last, 
Its features human with familiar light, 
A man, beyond the historian's art to kill. 
Or sculptor's to efface with patient chisel-blight. 



60 Sure the dumb earth hath memory, nor for naught 
Was Fancy given, on whose enchanted loom 
Present and Past commingle, fruit and bloom 
Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought 
Into the seamless tapestry of thought. 

66 So charmed, with undeluded eye we see 
In history's fragmentary tale 
Bright clews of continuity. 
Learn that high natures over Time prevail. 



10 UNDER THE OLD ELM. 

And feel ourselves a link in that entail 
70 That binds all ages past with all that are to be. 

III. 

1. 

Beneath our consecrated elm 

A century ago he stood, 

Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood 

Whose red surge sought, but could not overwhelm 

75 The life foredoomed to wield our rough-hewn helm : — 
From colleges, where now the gown 
To arms had yielded, from the town, 
Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to see 
The new-come chiefs and wonder which was he. 

80 No need to question long ; close-lipped and tall. 
Long trained in murder-brooding forests lone 
To bridle others' clamors and his own, 
Firmly erect, he towered above them all. 
The incarnate discipline that was to free 

85 With iron curb that armed democracy. 

2. 

A motley rout was that which came to stare. 
In raiment tanned by years of sun and storm, 

73. Referring to Braddock's defeat, when Washington wrote to his brother : 
" By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence I have been protected beyond 
all human probability or expectation ; for I had four bullets through my coat, 
and two horses shot under me, yet I escaped unhurt, although death was lev- 
elling my companions on every side of me." 

76. Study in Cambridge was suspended, the buildings used as barracks, and 
the students sent to Concord. 

86. The letters of Washington and of other generals in the early part of the 
Revolutionary War bear repeated witness to the undisciplined character of 
the troops. " I found a mixed multitude of people here," writes Wasliington, 
July 27th, "under very httle discipline, order, or government." 



UNDER THE OLD ELM. 11 

Of every shape that was not uniform, 
Dotted with regimentals here and there ; 

90 An army all of captains, used to pray 

And stiff in fight, but serious drill's despair, 
Skilled to debate their orders, not obey ; 
Deacons were there, selectmen, men of note 
In half-tamed hamlets ambushed round with woods, 

95 Ready to settle Freewill by a vote. 
But largely liberal to its private moods ; 
Prompt to assert by manners, voice, or pen, 
Or ruder arms, their rights as Englishmen, 
Nor much fastidious as to how and when : 

100 Yet seasoned stuff and fittest to create 
A thought-staid army or a lasting state : 
Haughty they said he was, at first ; severe ; 
But owned, as all men own, the steady hand 
Upon the bridle, jDatient to command, 

105 Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from fear. 

And learned to honor first, then love him, then revere. 
Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint 
And purpose clean as light from every selfish taint. 



Musing beneath the legendary tree, 
110 The years between furl off : I seem to see 

The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage through. 
Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue 
And weave prophetic aureoles round the head 
That shines our beacon now nor darkens with the dead. 



112. The American colors in the Revolution were buff and blue. Fox wore 
them in Parliament, as did Burke also on occasion. There is discussion as to 
the origin of the colors, for which see Stanhope's Miscellanies, First Series, 
pp. llG-122, and Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, Jan., 1859, pp. 149-154. 



12 UNDER THE OLD ELM. 

iiB O man of silent mood, 

A stranger among strangers then, 

How art thou since renowned the Great, the Good, 

Familiar as the day in all the homes of men ! 

The winged years, that winnow praise and blame, 
120 Blow many names out : they but fan to flame 

The self-renewing splendors of thy fame. 

IV. 

1- 

How many subtlest influences unite. 
With spiritual touch of joy or pain, 
Invisible as air and soft as light, 

125 To body forth that image of the brain 
We call our Country, visionary shape. 
Loved more than woman, fuller of fire than wine, 
Whose charm can none define, 
Nor any, though he flee it, can escape ! 

130 All party-colored threads the weaver Time 
Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime. 
All memories, all forebodings, hopes and fears. 
Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea, 
A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree, 

135 The casual gleanings of unreckoned years. 
Take goddess- shape at last and there is She, 
Old at our birth, new as the springing hours, 
Shrine of our wealmess, fortress of our powers, 
Consoler, kindler, peerless mid her peers, 

140 A force that 'neath our conscious being stirs, 
A life to give ours permanence, when we 
Are borne to mingle our poor earth with hers. 
And all this glowing world goes with us on our biers. 



UNDER THE OLD ELM. 13 

2. 

Nations are long results, by ruder ways 
145 Gathering the might that warrants length of days ; 

They may be pieced of half-reluctant shares 

Welded by hammer-strokes of broad-brained kings, 

Or from a doughty people grow, the heirs 

Of wise traditions widening cautious rings ; 
160 At best they are computable things, 

A strength behind us making us feel bold 

In right, or, as may chance, in wrong ; 

Whose force by figures may be summed and told 

So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong, 
156 And we but drops that bear compulsory part 

In the dumb throb of a mechanic heart ; 

But Country is a shape of each man's mind 

Sacred from definition, unconfined 

By the cramped walls where daily drudgeries grind ; 
160 An inward vision, yet an outward birth 

Of sweet familiar heaven and earth ; 

A brooding Presence that stirs motions blind 

Of wings within "our embryo being's shell 

That wait but her completer spell 
165 To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare 

Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air. 

3. 

You, who hold dear this self -conceived ideal, 
Wliose faith and works alone can make it real, 
Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her shrine 
170 Who lifts our lives away from Thine and Mine 
And feeds the lamp of manhood more divine 
With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy. 



14 UNDER THE OLD ELM. 

When all have done their utmost, surely he 

Hath given the best who gives a character 
175 Erect and constant, which nor any shock 

Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea 

Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir 

From its deep bases in the living rock 

Of ancient manhood's sweet security : 
180 And tliis he gave, serenely far from pride 

As baseness, boon with prosperous stars allied, 

Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins abide. 

4. 

No bond of men as common pride so strong, 
In names time-filtered for the lips of song, 

185 Still operant, with the primal Forces bound, 
Whose currents, on their spiritual round, 

- Transfuse our mortal will nor are gainsaid : 

These are their arsenals, these the exhaustless mines 
That give a constant heart in great designs ; 

190 These are the stuff whereof such dreams are made 
As make heroic men : thus surely he 
Still holds in place the massy blocks he laid 
'Neath our new frame, enforcing soberly 
The self-control that makes and keeps a people free. 

190. A reminiscence of Shakespeare's lines, — 

We are such stuff 

As dreams are made on, and our little life 

Is rounded with a sleep. 

The Tempest, Act IV. Scene 1. 



UNDER THE OLD ELM. 15 



195 Oh, for a drop of that Cornelian ink 

Which gave Agricola dateless length of days, 
To celebrate hiin fitly, neither swerve 
To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion's brink 
With him so statue-like in sad reserve, 

200 So diffident to claim, so forward to deserve ! 
Nor need I shun due influence of his fame 
Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as now 
The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow, 
That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim. 

2. 

206 What figure more immovably august 

Than that grave strength so patient and so pure, 
Calm in good fortune, when it wavered, sure. 
That mind serene, impenetrably just, 
Modelled on classic lines so simple they endure ? 

210 That soul so softly radiant and so white 

The track it left seems less of fire than light, 
Cold but to such as love distemper ature ? 
And if pure light, as some deem, be the force 
That drives rejoicing planets on their course, 

215 Why for his power benign seek an impurer source ? 
His was the true enthusiasm that burns long, 
Domestically bright. 

Fed from itself and shy of human sight, 
The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong, 

195. It was Caius Cornelius Tacitus who wrote in imperishable words the 
life of Agricola. 



16 UNDER THE OLD ELM. 

220 And not the short-lived fuel of a song. 

Passionless, say you ? What is passian for 
But to sublime our natures and control 
To front heroic toils with late return, 
Or none, or such as shames the conqueror ? 

225 That fire was fed with substance of the soul 
And not with holiday stubble, that could burn, 
Unpraised of men who after bonfires run, 
Through seven slow years of unadvancing war, 
Equal when fields were lost or fields were won, 

230 With breath of popular applause or blame, 

Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the same. 
Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle fame. 

3. 

Soldier and statesman, rarest unison ; 

High-poised example of great duties done 
235 Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn 

As life's indifferent gifts to all men born ; 

Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, 

But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, 

Tramping the snow to coral where they trod, 
240 Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content ; 

Modest, yet fu'm as Nature's self ; unblamed 

Save by the men his nobler temper shamed ; 

Never seduced through show of present good 

By other than unsetting lights to steer 
245 New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast mood 

More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear ; 

Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still 

In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of will : 

Not honored then or now because he wooed 

239. At Valley Forge. 



UNDER THE OLD ELM. 17 

280 The popular voice, but that he still withstood ; 
Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one 
Who was all this and ours, and all men's, — Wash- 
ington. 

4. 

Minds strong by fits, irregularly great. 
That flash and darken like revolving lights, 

255 Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to wait 
On the long curve of patient days and nights 
Rounding a whole life to the circle fair 
Of orbed fulfilment ; and this balanced soul, 
So simple in its grandeur, coldly bare 

260 Of draperies theatric, standing there 
In perfect symmetry of self-control. 
Seems not so great at first, but greater grows 
Still as we look, and by experience learn 
How gi'and this quiet is, how nobly stern 

265 The discipline that wrought through life-long throes 
That energetic passion of repose. 

5. 

A nature too decorous and severe, 

Too self-respectful in its griefs and joys. 

For ardent girls and boys 

270 Who find no genius in a mind so clear 

That its grave depths seem obvious and near. 
Nor a soul great that made so little noise. 
They feel no force in that calm-cadenced phrase, 
The habitual fuU-dress of his well-bred mind, 

276 That seems to pace the minuet's courtly maze 

267. The rhythm shows the pronunciation to be deco'rous. The poets vary- 
in their usage. An analagous word is sonorous. Decorum always has the 
accent on the second syllable. 
2 



18 UNDER THE OLD ELM. 

And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length of days. 
His firm-based brain, to self so little kind 
That no tumultuary blood could blind, 
Formed to control men, not to amaze, 
280 Looms not like those that borrow height of haze : 
It was a world of statelier movement then 
Than this we fret in, he a denizen 
Of that ideal Rome that made a man for men. 



VI. 



The longer on this earth we live 
285 And weigh the various qualities of men, 
Seeing how most are fugitive, 
Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then. 
Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of the fen, 
The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty 
290 Of plain devotedness to duty. 

Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise, 
But finding amplest recompense 
For life's ungarlanded expense 
In work done squarely and unwasted days. 
295 For this we honor him, that he could know 
How sweet the service and how free 
Of her, God's eldest daughter here below. 
And choose in meanest raiment which was she. 

2. 

Placid completeness, life without a fall 
300 From faith or highest aims, truth's breachless wall, 

288. The daughters of the fen, — will-o'-the-wisps. The Welsh call the 
same phenomenon corpse-lights, because it was supposed to forebode death, 
and to show the road that the corpse would take. 



UNDER THE OLD ELM. 19 

Surely if any fame can bear the touch, 

His will say '' Here ! " at the last trumpet's call, 

The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much. 

VII. 

1. 

Never to see a nation born 
305 Hath been given to mortal man. 

Unless to those who, on that summer morn, 

Gazed silent when the great Virginian 

Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash 

Shot union through the incoherent clash 
310 Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them 

Around a single will's unpliant stem, 

And making purpose of emotion rash. 

Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its womb. 

Nebulous at first but hardening to a star, 
316 Thi'ough mutual share of sunburst and of gloom. 

The common faith that made us what we are. 



That lifted blade transformed our jangling clans, 
Till then provincial, to Americans, 
And made a unity of wildering plans ; 

320 Here was the doom fixed : here is marked the date 
When the New World awoke to man's estate. 
Burnt its last ship and ceased to look behind : 
Nor thoughtless was the choice ; no love or hate 
Could from its poise move that deUberate mind, 

326 Weighing between too early and too late 
Those pitfalls of the man refused by Fate : 
His was the impartial vision of the great 



20 UNDER THE OLD ELM. 

Who see not as they wish, but as they find. 

He saw the dangers of defeat, nor less 
330 The incomputable perils of success ; 

The sacred past thrown by, an empty rind ; 

The future, cloud-land, snare of prophets blind ; 

The waste of war, the ignominy of peace ; 

On either hand a sullen rear of woes, 
335 Whose garnered lightnings none could guess, 

Piling its thunder-heads and muttering " Cease ! " 

Yet drew not back his hand, but bravely chose 

The seeming-desperate task whence our new nation 
rose. 

3. 

A noble choice and of immortal seed ! 

340 Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance 
Or easy were as in a boy's romance ; 
The man's whole life preludes the single deed 
That shall decide if his inheritance 
Be with the sifted few of matchless breed, 

345 Our race's sap and sustenance, 

Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep and feed. 
Choice seems a thing indifferent ; thus or so. 
What matters it ? The Fates with mocking face 
Look on inexorable, nor seem to know 

350 Where the lot lurks that gives life's foremost j)lace. 
Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still. 
And but two ways are offered to our will. 
Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, 
The problem still for us and all of human race. 

355 He chose, as men choose, where most danger showed^ 

351. See Shakespeare's play of The Merchant of Venice with its three cask- 
ets of gold, silver, and lead, from which the suitors of Portia were to choose 
fate. 



UNDER THE OLD ELM. 21 

Nor ever faltered 'neath the load 
Of petty cares, that gall great hearts the most, 
But kept right on the strenuous up-hill road, 
Strong to the end, above complaint or boast : 
360 The popular tempest on liis rock-mailed coast 
Wasted its wind-borne spray. 
The noisy marvel of a day ; 
His soul sate still in its unstormed abode. 



VIII. 



Virginia gave us this imperial man 
365 Cast in the massive mould 

Of those high-statured ages old 

Which into grander forms our mortal metal ran ; 

She gave us this unblemished gentleman : 

What shall we give her back bat love and praise 
370 As in the dear old unestranged days 

Before the inevitable wrong began ? 

Mother of States and undiminished men. 

Thou gavest us a country, giving him, 

And we owe alway what we owed thee then : 
375 The boon thou wouldst have snatched from us again 

Shines as before with no abatement dim. 

A great man's memory is the only thing 

With influence to outlast the present whim 

And bind us as when here he knit our golden ring. 
380 All of him that was subject to the hours 

Lies in thy soil and makes it part of ours : 

Across more recent graves, 

Where unresentful Nature waves 

Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod, 
386 Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God, 

385. The name is drawn from a compact in 1640 when the Church forbade 



^ 



22 UNDER THE OLD ELM. 

We from this consecrated plain stretch out 
Our hands as free from afterthought or doubt 
As here the united North 
Poured her embrowned manhood forth 

390 In welcome of our saviour and thy son. 

Through battle we have better learned thy worth, 
The long-breathed valor and undaunted will, 
Which, like liis own, the day's disaster done, 
Could, safe in manhood, suffer and be still. 

395 Both thine and ours the victory hardly won ; 
If ever with distempered voice or pen 
We have misdeemed thee, here we take it back, 
And for the dead of both don common black. 
Be to us evermore as thou wast then, 

400 As we forget thou hast not always been. 
Mother of States and unpolluted men, 
Virginia, fitly named from England's manly queen ! 

the barons to make any attack on their fellows between sunset on Wednesday 
and sunrise on the following Monday, or upon any ecclesiastical fast or feast 
day. It also provided that no man was to molest a laborer working in the 
fields, or to lay hands on any implement of husbandry, on pain of excommuni- 
cation. 



ODE 

READ AT THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIGHT 
AT CONCORD BRIDGE, APRIL 19, 1875. 



Who Cometh over the hills, 
Her garments with morning sweet, 
The dance of a thousand rills 
Making music before her feet ? 
6 Her presence freshens the air ; 
Sunshine steals light fi'om her face ; 
The leaden footstep of Care 
Leaps to the tune of her pace, 
Fairness of all that is fair, 
10 Grace at the heart of all grace, 
Sweetener of hut and of hall, 
Bringer of life out of naught, 
Freedom, oh, fairest of aU 
The daughters of Time and Thought ! 

n. 

15 She Cometh, cometh to-day : 
Hark ! hear ye not her tread, 
Sending a thrill through your clay, 
Under the sod there, ye dead. 
Her nursHngs and champions ? 

20 Do you not hear, as she comes, 



24 CONCORD ODE. 

The bay of the deep-mouthed guns, 
The gathering buzz of the drums ? 
The bells that called ye to prayer, 
How wildly they clamor on her, 

25 Crying, " She cometh ! prepare 
Her to praise and her to honor, 
That a hundred years ago 
Scattered here in blood and tears 
Potent seeds wherefrom should grow 

30 Gladness for a hundred years ! " 

III. 

Tell me, young men, have ye seen 
Creature of diviner mien 
For true hearts to long and cry for, 
Manly hearts to live and die for ? 

35 What hath she that others want ? 
Brows that all endearments haunt, 
Eyes that make it sweet to dare, 
Smiles that glad untimely death, 
Looks that fortify despair, 

40 Tones more brave than trumpet's breath ; 
Tell me, maidens, have ye known 
Household charm more sweetly rare, 
Grace of woman ampler blown, 
Modesty more debonair, 

45 Younger heart with wit full grown ? 
Oh, for an hour of my prime, 
The pulse of my hotter years, 
That I might praise her in rhyme 
Would tingle your eyelids to tears, 

50 Our sweetness, our strength, and our star, 
Our hope, our joy, and our trust, 



CONCORD ODE. 25 

Who lifted us out of the dust, 
And made us whatever we are ! 

IV. 

Whiter than moonshine u^Don snow 

56 Her raiment is, but romid the hem 
Crimson stained ; and, as to and fro 
Her sandals flash, we see on them, 
And on her instej) veined with blue. 
Flecks of crimson, on those fair feet, 

60 High-arched, Diana-like, and fleet, 
Fit for no grosser stain than dew : 
Oh, call them rather chrisms than stains, 
Sacred and from heroic veins ! 
For, in the glory-guarded pass, 

65 Her haughty and far-sliining head 
She bowed to shrive Leonidas 
With his imperishable dead ; 
Her, too, Morgarten saw. 
Where the Swiss lion fleshed his icy paw ; 

70 She followed Cromwell's quenchless star 
Where the grim Puritan tread 
Shook Marston, Naseby, and Dunbar : 



66. The Spartan king who with his 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians died a 
heroic death while defending the pass of Thermopylae. 

68. Morgarten, a mountain between which and Lake Igeri is the pass 
where, on November 15, 1315, the Swiss confederates were victorious over 
Leopold of Austria, slaughtering the flower of the Austrian chivalry, 1,500 in 
number. 

72. At the battle of Marston Moor (in Yorkshire, England), July 2, 1644, 
Cromwell at the head of his picked troops (Ironsides) totally defeated Prince 
Rupert. This victory gave the north of England to Parliament. 

72, Naseby, in Northampton County, England. The troops of Charles I. 
were here completely defeated by the Parliamentary Army on July 14, 1646. 

72. Dunbar, 30 miles N. N. E. of Edinburgh, Scotland. Here on September 
3, 1660, Cromwell with 16,000 troops totally defeated the Scots imder Leslie. 



26 CONCORD ODE. 

Yea, on her feet are dearer dyes 

Yet fresh, nor looked on with untearful eyes. 



75 Our fathers found her in the woods 

Where Nature meditates and broods, 

The seeds of unexampled things 

Which Time to consummation brings 

Through life and death and man's unstable moods ; 
80 They met her here, not recognized, 

A sylvan huntress clothed in furs. 

To whose chaste wants her bow sufficed, 

Nor dreamed what destinies were hers : 

She taught them bee-like to create 
85 Their simpler forms of Church and State ; 

8he taught them to endue 

The past with other functions than it knew. 

And turn in channels strange the uncertain stream 
of Fate; 

Better than all, she fenced them in their need 
90 With iron-handed Duty's sternest creed, 

'Gainst Self's lean wolf that ravens word and deed. 

VI. 

Why cometh she hither to-day 
To this low village of the plain 
Far from the Present's loud highway, 
95 From Trade's cool heart and seething brain ? 
Why cometh she ? She was not far away. 
Since the soul touched it, not in vain, 
With pathos of immortal gain, 

73. The reference is to the war for the Union, closed ten years before, but 
still fresh in the memory of those who had taken part in it. 



CONCORD ODE. 27 

'T is here her fondest memories stay. 
100 She loves yon pine-bemurmiired ridge 

Where now our broad-browed poet sleeps, 

Dear to both Englands ; near him he 

Who wore the ring of Canace ; 

But most her heart to rapture leaps 
105 Where stood that era-parting bridge, 

O'er which, with footfall still as dew, 

The Old Time passed into the New ; 

Where, as your stealthy river creeps, 

He whispers to his listening weeds 
110 Tales of sublimest homespun deeds. 

Here English law and English thought 

'Gainst the self-will of England fought ; 

And here were men (coequal with their fate) 

Who did great things, miconscious they were great. 
115 They dreamed not what a die was cast 

With that first answering shot ; what then ? 

There was their duty ; they were men 

Schooled the soul's inward gospel to obey, 

Though leading to the lion's den. 
120 They felt the habit-hallowed world give way 

Beneath their lives, and on went they. 

Unhappy who was last. 

When Buttrick gave the word. 

That awful idol of the unchallenged Past, 

101. Nathaniel Hawthorne is here referred to, the word poet being used in 
its broad sense of a person of creative imagination. 

103. Henry D. Thoreau is here referred to. The ring of Canace is supposed 
to reveal to the wearer the secrets of nature : to enable him to understand the 
language of birds, etc. See Cliaucer's Canterbury Tales, Imes 14,922-14,931. 

123. Major John Buttrick, one of the officers in command of the provincials 
on the 19th of April, 1775. At the North Bridge he began the opposition to 
the British with the memorable command, " Fire, feUow-soldiers, for God's 
sake fire ! " at the same time discharging his own gun. 



2.8 CONCORD ODE. 

125 Strong in their love, and in their lineage strong, 

Fell crashing : if they heard it not, 

Yet the earth heard, 

Nor ever hath forgot. 

As on from startled throne to throne, 
130 Where Superstition sate or conscious Wrong, 

A shudder ran of some dread birth unknown. 

Thrice venerable spot ! 

River more fateful than the Rubicon ! 

O'er those red planks, to snatch her diadem, 
135 Man's iHope, star-girdled, sprang with them. 

And over ways untried the feet of Doom strode on. 

VII. 

Think you these felt no charms 

In their gray homesteads and embowered farms ? 

In household faces waiting at the door 
140 Their evening step should lighten up no more ? 

In fields their boyish feet had known ? 

In trees their fathers' hands had set, 

And which with them had grown. 

Widening each year their leafy coronet ? 
145 Felt they no pang of passionate regret 

For those unsolid goods that seem so much our own ? 

These things are dear to every man that lives, 

And life prized more for what it lends than gives. 

Yea, many a tie, by iteration sweet, 
150 Strove to detain their fatal feet ; 

And yet the enduring half they chose. 

Whose choice decides a man hfe's slave or king, 

133. The Rubicon was the stream crossed by Julius Caesar when he left the 
province over which he had been placed, and thus put himself in opposition to 
the government of Rome. 



CONCORD ODE. 29 

The invisible things of God before the seen and 
known : 

Therefore their memory inspiration blows 
15B With echoes gathering on from zone to zone ; 

For manhood is the one immortal thing 

Beneath Time's changeful sky, 

And, where it lightened once, from age to age, 

Men come to learn, in grateful pilgrimage, 
160 That length of days is knowing when to die. 

VIII. 

What marvellous change of things and men ! 

She, a world-wandering orphan then. 

So mighty now I Those are her streams 

That whirl the myriad, myriad wheels 
165 Of all that does, and all that dreams, 

Of all that thinks, and all that feels, 

Through spaces stretched from sea to sea ; 

By idle tongues and busy brains. 

By who doth right, and who refrains, 
170 Hers are our losses and our gains ; 

Our maker and our victim she. 

IX. 

Maiden half mortal, half divine. 
We triumphed in thy coming ; to the brinks 
Our hearts were filled with pride's tumultuous wine ; 
176 Better to-day who rather feels than thinks. 
Yet will some graver thoughts intrude, 
And cares of sterner mood ; 
They won thee : who shall keep thee ? From the 

deeps 
Where discrowned empires o'er their ruins brood. 



30 CONCORD ODE. 

180 And many a thwarted hope wrmgs its weak hands 
and weeps, 

I hear the voice as of a mighty wind 

From all heaven's caverns rushing unconfined, 

" I, Freedom, dwell with Knowledge : I abide 

With men whom dust of faction cannot blind 
185 To the slow tracings of the Eternal Mind ; 

With men by culture trained and fortified, 

Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer, 

Fearless to counsel and obey. 

Conscience my scejjtre is, and law my sword, 
190 Not to be drawn in passion or in play. 

But terrible to punish and deter ; 

Implacable as God's word, 

Like it, a shepherd's crook to them that blindly err. 

Your firm-pulsed sires, my martyrs and my saints, 
196 Shoots of that only race whose patient sense 

Hath known to mingle flux with permanence, 

Eated my chaste denials and restraints 

Above the moment's dear-paid paradise : 

Beware lest, shifting with Time's gradual creep, 
200 The light that guided shine into your eyes. 

The envious Powers of ill nor wink nor sleep : 

Be therefore timely wise. 

Nor laugh when tliis one steals, and that one lies, 

As if your luck could cheat those sleepless spies, 
205 Till the deaf Fury comes your house to sweep ! " 

I hear the voice, and unaffrighted bow ; 

Ye shall not be prophetic now, 

Heralds of ill, that darkening fly 

Between my yision and the rainbowed sky, 
210 Or on the left your hoarse forebodings croak 

From many a blasted bough 



CONCORD ODE. 31 

On Yggdrasil's storm-sinewed oak, 
That once was green, Hope of the West, as thou : 
Yet pardon if I tremble while I boast ; 
215 For I have loved as those wlio pardon most. 

X. 

Away, ungrateful doubt, away ! 

At least she is our own to-day. 

Break into rapture, my song, 

Verses, leap forth in the sun, 
220 Bearing the joyance along 

Like a train of fire as ye run ! 

Pause not for choosing of words. 

Let them but blossom and sing 

Blithe as the orchards and birds 
225 With the new coming of spring ! 

Dance in your jollity, bells ; 

Shout, cannon ; cease not, ye drums ; 

Answer, ye hill-side and dells ; 

Bow, all ye people ! She comes, 
230 Radiant, calm-fronted, as when 

She hallowed that April day. 

Stay with us ! Yes, thou shalt stay, 

Softener and strengthener of men, 

Freedom, not won by the vain, 
235 Not to be courted in play. 

Not to be kept without pain. 

Stay with us ! Yes, thou wilt stay, 

Handmaid and mistress of all, 

Kindler of deed and of thought, 



212. Yggdrasil, according to the Scandinavian Mythology, is " The tree of 
the universe," under which the gods assemble every day in council. Its 
branches spread over the whole world and tower up above the heavens. 



32 CONCORD ODE. 

240 Thou that to hut and to hall 
Equal deliverance brought ! 
Souls of her martyrs, draw near, 
Touch our dull lips with your fire, 
That we may praise without fear 

245 Her our delight, our desire, 

Our faith's inextinguishable star, 
Our hope, our remembrance, our trust, 
Our present, our past, our to be, 
Who will mingle her life with our dust 

250 And makes us deserve to be free ! 



UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

Frank-hearted hostess of the field and wood, 
Gypsy, whose roof is every spreading tree, 
June is the pearl of our New England year. 
Still a surprisal, though expected long, 
6 Her coming startles. Long she lies in wait, 
Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back, 
Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, 
With one great gush of blossom storms the world. 
A week ago the sparrow was divine ; 

10 The bluebird, shifting his light load of song 
From post to post along the cheerless fence, 
Was as a rhymer ere the poet come ; 
But now, oh rapture ! sunshine winged and voiced. 
Pipe blown through by the warm wild breath of the 
West 

16 Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, 
Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, 
The bobolink has come, and, like the soul 
Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, 

17. Bryant has a charming poem, Robert of Lincoln^ in which the light- 
hearted song of the bird gets a homelier but no less delightful interpretation. 
See, also, Lowell's lines in Suthin' in the Pastoral lAne, No. VI. of the second 
series of The Biglow Papers : — 

" 'Nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, 
Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here ; 
Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, 
Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, 
Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, 
Runs down; a brook o' laughter, thru the air." 



84 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what 
20 Save June ! Dear June ! New God he praised for 
June. 

May is a pious fraud of the almanac, 

A ghastly parody of real Spring 

Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind ; 

Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date, 

25 And, with her handful of anemones, 
Herself as shivery, steal into the sun, 
The season need but turn his hour-glass round, 
And winter suddenly, like crazy Lear, 
Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms, 

30 Her budding breasts and wan dislustred front 
With frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard 
All overblown. Then, warmly walled with books, 
While my Wood-fire supplies the sun's defect. 
Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams, 

35 I take my May down from the happy shelf 

Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row, 
Waiting my choice to open with full breast. 
And beg an alms of spring-time, ne'er denied 
In-doors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods 

40 Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year. 

July breathes hot, sallows the crispy fields. 
Curls up the wan leaves of the lilac-hedge. 
And every eve cheats us with show of clouds 
That braze the horizon's western rim, or hang 
45 Motionless, with heaped canvas drooping idly. 



28. In the fifth act of Shakespeare's King Lear, Lear enters with Cordelia 
dead in his arms. 
44. I. e., that give a brazen hue and hardness to the western sky at sunsefc. 



UNDER THE WILLOWS. 36 

Like a dim fleet by starving men besieged, 
Conjectured half, and half descried afar, 
Helpless of wind, and seeming to slip back 
Adown the smooth curve of the oily sea. 

60 But June is full of invitations sweet. 

Forth from the cliimney's yawn and thrice-read tomes 
To leisurely delights and sauntering thoughts 
That brook no ceiling narrower than the blue. 
The cherry, drest for bridal, at my pane 

66 Brushes, then listens. Will he come ? The bee, 
All dusty as a miller, takes his toll 
Of powdery gold, and grumbles. What a day 
To sun me and do nothing ! Nay, I think 
Merely to bask and ripen is sometimes 

60 The student's wiser business ; the brain 
That forages all climes to line its cells, 
Ranging both worlds on lightest wings of wish, 
Will not distil the juices it has sucked 
To the sweet substance of pellucid thought, 

66 Except for him who hath the secret learned 
To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take 
ITie winds into his pulses. Hush ! 't is he ! 
My oriole, my glance of summer fire, 
Is come at last, and, ever on the watch, 

70 Twitches the pack-thread I had lightly wound 
About the bough to help liis housekeeping, — 
Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his luck, 
Yet fearing me who laid it in his way. 
Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs, 

76 Divines the providence that hides and helps. 
Heave^ ho I Heave, ho ! he whistles as the twine 
Slackens its hold 



36 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

Lightens across the sunlight to the elm 
Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt. 
80 Nor all his booty is the thread ; he trails 
My loosened thought with it along the air, 
And I must follow, would I ever find 
The inward rhyme to all this wealth of life. 

I care not how men trace their ancestry, 

86 To ape or Adam ; let them please their whim ; 
But I in June am midway to believe 
A tree among my far progenitors. 
Such sympathy is mine with all the race, 
Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet 

90 There is between us. Surely there are times 
When they consent to own me of their kin. 
And condescend to me, and call me cousin, 
Murmuring faint lullabies of eldest time, 
Forgotten, and yet dumbly felt with thrills 

96 Moving the lips, though fruitless of the words. 
And I have many a life-long leafy friend, 
Never estranged nor careful of my soul. 
That knows I hate the axe, and welcomes me 
Within his tent as if I were a bird, 

100 Or other free companion of the earth. 
Yet undegenerate to the shifts of men. 
Among them one, an ancient willow, spreads 
Eight balanced limbs, springing at once all round 
His deep-ridged trunk with upward slant diverse, 

106 In outline like enormous beaker, fit 

For hand of Jotun, where, 'mid snow and mist 
He holds unwieldy revel. This tree, spared, 
I know not by what grace, — for in the blood 

106. Jotiin is a giant in the Scandinavian mythology. 



UNDER THE WILLOWS. 87 

Of our New World subduers lingers yet 
110 Hereditary feud with trees, they being 

(They and the red-man most) our fathers' foes, — 

Is one of six, a willow Pleiades, 

The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink 

Where the steep upland dips into the marsh, 
118 Their roots, like molten metal cooled in flowing, 

Stiffen in coils and runnels down the bank. 

The friend of all the winds, wide-armed he towers 

And glints his steely aglets in the sun. 

Or whitens fitfully with sudden bloom 
120 Of leaves breeze-lifted, much as when a shoal 

Of devious minnows wheel from where a pike 

Lurks balanced 'neath the lily-pads, and whirl 

A rood of silver bellies to the day. 

Alas ! no acorn from the British oak 

125 'Neath which slim fairies tripping wrought those 
rings 
Of greenest emerald, wherewith fireside life 
Did with the invisible spirit of Nature wed, 
Was ever planted here ! No darnel fancy 
Might choke one useful blade in Puritan fields ; 

130 With horn and hoof the good old Devil came. 
The witch's broomstick was not contraband, 
But all that superstition had of fair. 
Or piety of native sweet, was doomed. 
And if there be who nurse unholy faiths, 

136 Fearing their god as if he were a wolf 

112. The Pleiades were seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione ; to escape 
the hunter Orion, they begged to be changed in form, and were made a con- 
stellation in the heavens. Only six were visible to the naked eye, so the 
seventh waa held to be a lost Pleiad, and several stories were told to account 
for the loss. 



38 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

That snuffed round every home, and was not seen, 
There should be some to watch and keep alive 
All beautiful beliefs. And such was that, — 
'Bj solitary shepherd first surmised 

140 Under Thessalian oaks, loved by some maid 
Of royal stirp, that silent came and vanished, 
As near her nest the hermit thrush, nor dared 
Confess a mortal name, — that faith which gave 
A Hamadryad to each tree ; and I 

145 Will hold it true that in this willow dwells 
The open-handed spirit, frank and blithe, 
Of ancient Hospitality, long since. 
With ceremonious thrift, bowed out of doors. 

In June 't is good to lie beneath a tree 

150 While the blithe season comforts every sense, 
Steeps all the brain in rest, and heals the heart, 
Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares, 
Fragrant and silent as that rosy snow 
Wherewith the pitying apple-tree fills up 

156 And tenderly lines some last-year robin's nest. 

There muse I of old timeSj old hopes, old friends, — 
Old friends ! The writing of those words has borne 
My fancy backward to the gracious past. 
The generous past, when all was possible, 

160 For all was then untried ; the years between 

Have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons, none 
Wiser than this, — to spend in all things else. 
But of old friends to be most miserly. 
Each year to ancient friendships adds a ring, 

165 As to an oak, and precious more and more, 
Without deservingness or help of ours. 
They grow, and, silent, wider spread, each year, 



UNDER THE WILLOWS. 39 

Their unbought ring of shelter or of shade. 

Sacred to me the lichens on the bark, 
170 Which Nature's milliners would scrape away ; 

Most dear and sacred every withered limb ! 

'T is good to set them early, for our faith 

Pines as we age, and, after wrinkles come, 

Few plant, but water dead ones with vain tears. 
175 This willow is as old to me as life ; 

And under it full often have 1 stretched, 

Feeling the warm earth like a thing alive. 

And gathering virtue in at every pore 

Till it possessed me wholly, and thought ceased, 
180 Or was transfused in something to which thought 

Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was lost. 

Gone from me like an ache, and what remained 

Became a part of the universal joy. 

My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, 
185 Danced in the leaves ; or, floating in the cloud, 

Saw its white double in the stream below ; 

Or else, sublimed to purer ecstasy. 

Dilated in the broad blue over all. 

I was the wind that dappled the lush grass, 
190 The tide that crept with coolness to its roots. 

The thin-winged swallow skating on the air ; 

The life that gladdened everything was mine. 

Was I then truly all that I beheld ? 

Or is this stream of being but a glass 
195 Where the mind sees its visionary self, 

As, when the kingfisher flits o'er his bay. 

Across the river's hollow heaven below. 

His picture flits, — another, yet the same ? 

But suddenly the sound of human voice 
200 Or footfall, like the drop a chemist pours. 



40 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

Doth in opacous cloud precipitate 

The consciousness that seemed but now dissolved 

Into an essence rarer than its own, 

And I am narrowed to myself once more. 

205 For here not long is solitude secure, 
Nor Fantasy left vacant to her spell. 
Here, sometimes, in this paradise of shade, 
Bippled with western winds, the dusty Tramp, 
Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, 

210 Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 

And munch an unearned meal. I cannot help 
Liking this creature, lavish Summer's bedesman, 
Who from the almshouse steals when nights grow 

warm. 
Himself his large estate and only charge, 

215 To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, 
Nobly superior to the household gear 
That forfeits us our privilege of nature. 
I bait him with my match-box and my pouch. 
Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke, 

220 His equal now, divinely unemployed. 

Some smack of Robin Hood is in the man, 

Some secret league with wild wood-wanderii:g things ; 

He is our ragged Duke, our barefoot Earl, 

By right of birtli exonerate from toil, 

225 Who levies rent from us his tenants all, 

And serves the state by merely being. Here, 
The Scissors-grinder, pausing, doffs his hat, 
And lets the kind breeze, with its delicate fan, 
Winnow the heat from out his dank gray hair, — 

230 A grimy Ulysses, a much-wandered man, 

230. Ulysses, the hero of Homer's Odyssey, receives the epithet much wait' 



UNDER THE WILLOWS. 41 

Whose feet are known to all the populous ways, 

And many men and manners he hath seen, 

Not without fruit of solitary thought. 

He, as the habit is of lonely men, — 
236 Unused to try the temper of their mind 

In fence with others, — positive and shy, 

Yet knows to put an edge upon his speech. 

Pithily Saxon in unwilling talk. 

Him I entrap with my long-suffering knife, 
240 And, while its poor blade hums away in sparks, 

Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind, 

In motion set obsequious to his wheel, 

And in its quality not much unlike. 

Nor wants my tree more punctual visitors. 

246 The children, they who are the only rich. 
Creating for the moment, and possessing 
Whate'er they choose to feign, — for still with them 
Kind Fancy plays the fairy godmother. 
Strewing their lives with cheap material 

260 For winged horses and Aladdin's lamps. 
Pure elfin-gold, by manhood's touch profane 
To dead leaves disenchanted, — long ago 
Between the branches of the tree fixed seats, 
Making an o'erturned box their table. Oft 

255 The shrilling girls sit here between school hours, 
And play at What 's my thought like ? while the 

boys. 
With whom the age chivalric ever bides. 
Pricked on by knightly spur of female eyes. 
Climb high to swing and shout on perilous boughs, 

dered in the first line of that poem, an epithet often repeated, and is described 
as one who had seen many cities of men, and known many minds. 



42 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

260 Or, from the willow's armory equipped 

With musket dumb, green banner, edgeless sword, 
Make good the rampart of their tree-redoubt 
'Gainst eager British storming from below, 
And keep alive the tale of Bunker's Hill. 

265 Here, too, the men that mend our village ways. 
Vexing MacAdam's ghost with pounded slate, 
Their nooning take ; much noisy talk they spend 
On horses and their ills ; and, as John Bull 
Tells of Lord This or That, who was his friend, 

270 So these make boast of intimacies long 

With famous teams, and add large estimates. 
By competition swelled from mouth to mouth. 
Of how much they could draw, till one, ill pleased 
To have his legend overbid, retorts : 

275 " You take and stretch truck-horses in a string 
From here to Long Wharf end, one thing I know, 
Not heavy neither, they could never draw, — 
Ensign's long bow ! " Then laughter loud and long. 
So they in their leaf-shadowed microcosm 

280 Image the larger world ; for wheresoe'er 
Ten men are gathered, the observant eye 
Will find mankind in little, as the stars 
Glide up and set, and all the heavens revolve 
In the small welkin of a drop of dew. 

285 I love to enter pleasure by a postern, 

Not the broad popular gate that gulps the mob ; 
To find my theatres in roadside nooks, 
Where men are actors, and suspect it not ; 

266. Macadamized roads have kept alive the name of Sir John Loudon Mac- 
adam, who introduced the mode at the beginning of this century. 



UNDER THE WILLOWS. 43 

Where Nature all unconscious works her will, 
290 And every passion moves with human gait, 

Unhampered by the buskin or the train. 

Hating the crowd, where we gregarious men 

Lead lonely lives, I love society. 

Nor seldom find the best with simple souls 
295 Unswerved by culture from their native bent, 

The ground we meet on being primal man 

And nearer the deep bases of our lives. 

But oh, half heavenly, earthly half, my soul, 
Canst thou from those late ecstasies descend, 

300 Thy lips still wet with the miraculous wine 
That transubstantiates all thy baser stuff 
To such divinity that soul and sense. 
Once more commingled in their source, are lost, — 
Canst thou descend to quench a vulgar thirst 

305 With the mere dregs and rinsings of the world ? 
Well, if my nature find her pleasure so, 
I am content, nor need to blush ; I take 
My little gift of being clean from God, 
Not haggling for a better, holding it 

310 Good as was ever any in the world. 
My days as good and full of miracle. 
I pluck my nutriment from any bush. 
Finding out poison as the first men did 
By tasting and then suffering, if I must. 

315 Sometimes my bush burns, and sometimes it is 
A leafless wilding shivering by the wall ; 
But I have known when winter barberries 
Pricked the effeminate palate with surprise 
Of savor whose mere harshness seemed divine. 

315. As did Moses's bush. 



44 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

320 Oh, benediction of the higher mood 

And human-kindness of the lower ! for both 
I will be grateful while I live, nor question 
The wisdom that hath made us what we are. 
With such large range as from the ale-house bench 

325 Can reach the stars and be with both at home. 
They tell us we have fallen on prosy days. 
Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feast 
Where gods and heroes took delight of old ; 
But though our lives, moving in one dull round 

330 Of reputation infinite, become 

Stale as a newspaper once read, and though 
History herself, seen in her workshop, seem 
To have lost the art that dyed those glorious panes, 
Eich with memorial shapes of saint and sage, 

336 That pave with splendor the Past's dusky aisles, — 
Panes that enchant the light of common day 
With colors costly as the blood of kings, 
Till with ideal hues it edge our thought, — 
Yet while the world is left, while nature lasts, 

340 And man the best of nature, there shall be 

Somewhere contentment for these human hearts, 
Some freshness, some unused material 
For wonder and for song. I lose myself 
In other ways where solemn guide-posts say, 

346 This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose, 
But here, here only, I am ne'er betrayed, 
For every by-path leads me to my love. 

God's passionless reformers, influences, 
That purify and heal and are not seen, 
350 Shall man say whence your virtue is, or how 
Ye make medicinal the wayside weed ? 



UNDER THE WILLOWS. 45 

I know that sunshine, through whatever rift 
How shaped it matters not, upon my walls 
Paints disks as perfect-rounded as its source, 
366 And, like its antityjDe, the ray divine, 
However finding entrance, perfect still, 
Repeats the image unimpaired of God. 

We, who by shipwreck only find the shores 
Of divine wisdom, can but kneel at first ; 

360 Can but exult to feel beneath our feet. 

That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps, 
The shock and sustenance of solid earth ; 
Inland afar we see what temples gleam 
Through immemorial stems of sacred groves, 

366 And we conjecture shining shapes therein ; 
Yet for a space we love to wonder here 
Among the shells and sea-weed of the beach. 

So mused I once within my willow-tent 

One brave June morning, wlVen the bluff northwest, 

370 Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day 
That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins. 
Brimmed the great cup of heaven with sparkling 

cheer 
And roared a lusty stave ; the sliding Charles, 
Blue toward the west, and bluer and more blue, 

376 Living and lustrous as a woman's eyes 

Look once and look no more, with southward curve 
Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hair 
Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold ; 
From blossom-clouded orchards, far away 

380 The bobolink tinkled ; the deep meadows flowed 
With multitudinous pulse of light and shade 



46 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

Against the bases of the southern hills, 
While here and there a drowsy island rick 
Slept and its shadow slept ; the wooden bridge 
385 Thundered, and then was silent ; on the roofs 
The sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat ; 
Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain, 
All life washed clean in this high tide of June. 



ODE 

WKITTEjST for the CELEBRATIOlSr OF THE INTRODTJC- 
TI0:N- OF THE COCHITUATE WATER INTO THE CITY 
OF BOSTON. 

My name is Water : I have sped 

Through strange, dark ways, untried before, 

By pure desire of friendship led, 
Cochituate's ambassador ; 
6 He sends four royal gifts by me : 

Long life, health, peace, and purity. 

I 'ra Ceres' cup-bearer ; I pour, 

For flowers and fruits and all their kin, 

Her crystal vintage, from of yore 

10 Stored in old Earth's selectest bin, 

Flora's Falernian ripe, since God 

The wine-press of the deluge trod. 

In that far isle whence, iron-willed. 

The New World's sires their bark unmoored, 
15 The fairies' acorn-cups I filled 

Upon the toadstool's silver board, 

4. Lake Cochituate, about twenty miles from Boston, is the principal 
source from which Boston city obtains its water, brought thence by an aque- 
duct. 

7. Ceres, the goddess of corn, harvest, and flowers. 

11. Water is here referred to. Flora's Falernian being used in the same 
way that we sometimes use the expression Adam^s Ale. ' Falernus Ager is a 
part of Italy famed in antiquity for its wine. 



48 COCHITUATE ODE. 

And, 'neath Heme's oak, for Shakespeare's sight, 
Strewed moss and grass with diamonds bright. 

No fairies in the Mayflower came, 
20 And, lightsome as I sparkle here. 
For Mother Bay State, busy dame, 

I 've toiled and drudged this many a year, 
Throbbed in her engines' iron veins, 
Twirled myriad spindles for her gains. 

25 I, too, can weave : the warp I set 

Through which the sun his shuttle throws, 
And, bright as Noah saw it, yet 

For you the arching rainbow glows, 
A sight in Paradise denied 
30 To unfallen Adam and his bride. 

When Winter held me in his grip, 

You seized and sent me o'er the wave, 

Ungrateful ! in a prison-ship ; 
But I forgive, not long a slave, 
35 For, soon as summer south-winds blew, 

Homeward I fled, disguised as dew. 

For countless services I 'm fit, 

Of use, of pleasure, and of gain. 
But lightly from all bonds I flit, 
40 Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain ; 
From mill and wash-tub I escape. 
And take in heaven my proper shape. 

17. See Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, Act. IV., Scene IV. 

21. Massachusetts is called the Bay State because the original colony was 
called the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. 

32. Referring to the ice-trade, which was first undertaken on a large scale 
in Massachusetts. 



THE COURTIN'. 49 

So, free myself, to-day, elate 

I come from far o'er hill and mead, 
46 And here, Cochituate's envoy, wait 
To be your blithesome Ganymede, 
And brim your cups with nectar true 
That never will make slaves of you. 



THE COURTIN'. 

God makes sech nights, all white an' still 
Fur 'z you can look or listen, 

Moonsliine an' snow on field an' hill, 
All silence an' all glisten. 

6 Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 
An' peeked in thru' the winder, 
An' there sot Huldy all alone, 
'ith no one nigh to hender. 

A fireplace filled the room's one side 
10 With half a cord o' wood in — 

There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) 
To bake ye to a pud din'. 

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out 
Towards the pootiest, bless her, 
16 An' leetle flames danced all about 
The chiny on the dresser. 

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, 
An' in amongst 'em rusted 

46. The cup-bearer of the gods. 
4 



50 THE COURTJN'. 

The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young 
20 Fetched back from Concord busted. 



The very room, coz she was in, 

Seemed warm from floor to ceilin', 

An' she looked full ez rosy agin 
Ez the apples she was peelin'. 

25 'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look 
On sech a blessed cretur, 
A dogrose blushin' to a brook 
Ain't modester nor sweeter. 

He was six foot o' man, A 1, 
30 Clear grit an' human natur' ; 
None could n't quicker pitch a ton 
Nor dror a furrer straighter. 

He 'd sparked it with full twenty gals, 
Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, 
35 Fust this one, an^ then thet, by spells - — 
All is, he could n't love 'em. 

But long o' her his veins 'ould run 

All crinkly like curled maple. 
The side she breshed felt full o' sun 
40 Ez a south slope in Ap'il. 

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing 

Ez hisn in the choir ; 
My ! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, 
She knowed the Lord was nigher. 



THE COURTIN\ 61 

46 An' she 'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, 
When her new meetin'-bunnet 
Felt somehow thru' its cro\vn a pair 
0' blue eyes sot upon it. 

- Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some ! 
60 She seemed to 've gut a new soul. 
For she felt sartin-sure he 'd come, 
Down to her very shoe-sole. 

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, 
A-raspin' on the scraper, — 
66 All ways to once her feelins flew 
Like sparks in burnt-up paper. 

He kin' o' I'itered on the mat, 

Some doubtfle o' the sekle, 
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, 
60 But hern went pity Zekle. 

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk 
Ez though she wished him furder, 

An' on her apples kep' to work, 
Parin' away like murder. 

66' " You want to see my Pa, I s'pose ? " 

" Wal ... no ... I come dasignin' " — 
" To see my Ma ? She 's sprinklin' clo'es 
Agin to-morrer's i'nin*.'* 

To say why gals acts so or so, 

70 Or don't, 'ould be presumin' ; 

Mebby to mean yes an' say no 

Comes nateral to women. 



62 THE COURTIN'. 

He stood a spell on one foot fust, 
Then stood a spell on t' other, 
75 An' on which one he felt the wust 
He could n't ha' told ye nuther. 

Says he, "I 'd better call agin ; " 

Says she, " Think likely, Mister : " 
Thet last word pricked him like a pin, 
80 An' . . . Wal, he up an' kist her. 

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, 

Huldy sot pale ez ashes, 
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips 

An' teary roun' the lashes. 

85 For she was jes' the quiet kind 
Whose naturs never vary, 
Like streams that keep a summer mind 
Snowhid in Jenooary. 

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued 
90 Too tight for all expressin', 
Tell mother see how metters stood, 
An' gin 'em both her blessin'. 

Then her red come back like the tide 
Down to the Bay o' Fundy, 
95 An' all I know is they was cried 
In meetin' come nex' Sunday. 



TO H. W. LONGFELLOW 

ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867. 

I NEED not praise the sweetness of his song, 

Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds 
Smooth as om* Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong 
The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along, 
6 Full without noise, and whispers m his reeds. 

With loving breath of all the winds his name 
Is blown about the world, but to his friends 
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame. 
And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim 
10 To murmur a God bless you ! and there ends. 

As I muse backward up the checkered years 

Wherein so much was given, so much was lost, 
Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen tears, — 
But hush ! this is not for profaner ears ; 
16 Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost. 

Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core, 

As naught but nightshade grew upon earth's 
ground ; 
Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the more 

3. The river Charles, near which were the homes of Lowell and Longfellow. 



54 TO H. W. LONGFELLOW. 

Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door 
20 Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound. 

Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying shade 

Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with sun, 
So through his trial faith translucent rayed 
Till darkness, half disnatured so, betrayed 
26 A heart of sunshine that would fain o'errun. 

Surely if skill in song the shears may stay 

And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss, 
If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, 
He shall not go, although his presence may, 
30 And the next age in praise shall double this. 

Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet 
As gracious natures find his song to be ; 
May Age steal on with softly-cadenced feet 
Falling in music, as for him were meet 
35 Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he ! 



AGASSIZ. 

[Jean Louis Rudolphe Agassiz was of Swiss birth, 
having been born in Canton Vaud, Switzerland, in 1807 
(see Longfellow's pleasing poem, " The Fiftieth Birth- 
day of Agassiz"), and had already made a name as a 
naturalist, when he came to this country to pursue in- 
vestigations in 1846. Here he was persuaded to re- 
main, and after that identified himself with American 
life and learning. He was a masterly teacher, and by 
his personal enthusiasm and influence did more than 
any one man in America to stimulate study in natural 
history.^ Through his name a great institution, the 
Museum of Comparative Zoology, was established at 
Cambridge, in association with Harvard University, and 
he remained at the head of it until his death in 1874. 
His home was in Cambridge, and he endeared himself 
to all with whom he was associated by the unselfishness 
of his ambition, the generosity of his affection, and the 
liberality of his nature. Lowell was in Florence at the 
time of Agassiz's death, and sent home this poem, which 
was published in the " Atlantic Monthly " for May, 
1874. Longfellow, besides in the poem mentioned 
above, has written of Agassiz in his sonnets, " Three 
Friends of Mine," in., and Whittier also wrote " The 
Prayer of Agassiz." These poems are well worth com- 
paring, as indicating characteristic strains of the three 
poets.] 

1 See Appendix. 



56 ^ AGASSIZ. 

Come 

Dicesti egli ebbe f non viv' egli ancora ? 
Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome ? 

Dante, Inferno, Canto X. lines 67-69. 
[How 
Saidst thou, — lie had ? Is he not still alive ? 
Does not the sweet light strike upon his eye ? 

Longfellow, Translation,'] 

I. 

1. 

The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill 
Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes, 
Confutes poor Hope's last fallacy of ease, — 
The distance that divided her from ill : 
6 Earth sentient seems again as when of old 

The horny foot of Pan 
Stamped, and the conscious horror ran 
Beneath men's feet through all her fibres cold : 
Space's blue walls are mined ; we feel the throe 
10 From underground of our night-mantled foe : 

The flame-winged feet 
Of Trade's new Mercury, that dry-shod run 
Through briny abysses dreamless of the sun, 

Are mercilessly fleet, 
16 And at a bound annihilate 

Ocean's prerogative of short reprieve ; 

Surely ill news might wait, 
And man be patient of delay to grieve : 

Letters have sympathies 

6. Since Pan was the deity supposed to pervade all nature, the mysterious 
noises which issued from rocks or caves in mountainous regions were ascribed 
to him, and an unreasonable fear springing from sudden or unexplained causes 
came to be called a panic, 

12. Mercury, the messenger of the gods, and fabled to have winged sandals, 
was the tutelar divinity of merchants, so that in a double way the modem ap- 
plication to the spirit of the electric telegraph becomes fit, 



AGASSIZ. 57 

20 And tell-tale faces that reveal, 

To senses finer than the eyes, 
Their errand's purport ere we break the seal ; 
They wind a sorrow round with circumstance 
To stay its feet, nor all unwarned displace 
25 The veil that darkened from our sidelong glance 
The inexorable face : 
But now Fate stuns as with a mace ; 
The savage of the skies, that men have caught 
And some scant use of language taught, 
30 Tells only what he must, — 

The steel cold fact in one laconic thrust. 

2. 

So thought I, as, with vague, mechanic eyes, 
I scanned the festering news we half despise 
Yet scramble for no less, 
36 And read of public scandal, private fraud. 

Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob applaud, 
Office made vile to bribe unworthiness. 

And all the unwholesome mess 
The Land of Broken Promise serves of late 

39. At the time when tliis poem was written there was a succession of terri- 
ble disclosures in America of public and private corruption ; loud vaunts were 
made of dishonoring the national word in financial matters, and there were 
few who did not look almost with despair upon the condition of public affairs. 
The aspect was even more sharply defined to those Americans who, travelling 
in Europe, found themselves openly or silently regarded as representatives of a 
nation that seemed to be disgracing itself. Lowell's bitter words were part of 
the goadings of conscience which worked so sharply in America in the years 
immediately following. He was reproached by some for such words as this 
line contains, and, when he published his Three Ilemorial Poems, made this 
noble self-defence which stands in the front of that little book : — 

" If I let fall a word of bitter mirth 
When public shames more shameful pardon won. 
Some have misjudged me, and my service done, 
If small, yet faithful, deemed of little worth ; - 



58 AG AS SI Z. 

40 To teach the Old World how to wait, 

When suddenly. 
As happens if the brain, from overweight 

Of blood, infect the eye. 
Three tiny words grew lurid as I read, 
45 And reeled commingling : Agassiz is dead. 

As when, beneath the street's familiar jar, 
An earthquake's alien omen rumbles far. 
Men listen and forebode, I hung my head. 
And strove the present to recall, 
BO As if the blow that stunned were yet to fall. 



Uprooted is our mountain oak, 
That promised long security of shade 
And brooding-place for many a winged thought ; 
Not by Time's softly warning stroke 
56 By pauses of relenting pity stayed, 

But ere a root seemed sapt, a bough decayed, 
From sudden ambush by the whirlwind caught 
And in his broad maturity betrayed ! 



Well might I, as of old, appeal to you, 
O mountains, woods, and streams. 



Through veins that drew their life from Western earth 

Two hundred years and more my blood hath run 

In no polluted course from sire to son ; 

And thus was I predestined ere my birth 

To love the soil wherewith my fibres own 

Instinctive sympathies ; yet love it so 

As honor would, nor lightly to dethrone 

Judgment, the stamp of manhood, nor forego 

The son's right to a mother dearer grown 

With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow." 

59. In classical mythology Adonis was fabled as a lovely youth, kiUed by a 



AGASSIZ. 59 

To help us mourn him, for ye loved him too ; 

But simpler moods befit our modern themes, 
And no less perfect birth of nature can, 
Though they yearn tow'rds him, sympathize with 
man, 

66 Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a wall ; 
Answer ye rather to my call, ^ 

Strong poets of a more outspoken day. 
Too much for softer arts forgotten since 
That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince, 

70 Lead me some steps in your directer way. 
Teach me those words that strike a solid root 

Within the ears of men ; 
Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, 
Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed Ben, — 

76 For he was masculine from head and heel. 
Nay, let himself stand undiminished by 
With those clear parts of him that will not die. 
Himself from out the recent dark I claim 
To hear, and, if I flatter him, to blame ; 

80 To show himself, as still I seem to see, 



boar, and lamented long by Venus, who was inconsolable for his loss. The 
poets used this story for a symbol of grief, and when mourning the loss of a 
human being were wont to call on nature to join in the lamentation. This 
classic form of mourning descended in literature, and at different times has 
found very beautiful expression, as in Milton's Lycidas and Shelley's Adonais, 
which is a lament over the dead poet Keats. Here the poet might justly call 
on nature to lament the death of her great student, but he turas from the 
form as too classic and artificial and remote from his warmer sympathy. In 
his own strong sense of human life he demands a fellowship of grief from no 
lower order of nature than man himself. 

74. Chapman and Ben Jonson were contemporaries of Shakespeare. The 
former is best known by his rich, picturesque translation of Homer. Lowell 
may easily have had in mind among Jonson's Elegies, his majestic ode. On the 
Death of Sit- Lucius Gary and Sir H. Morison. He rightly claims for the 
poets of the Elizabethan age a frankness and largeness of speech rarely heard 
in our more refined and restrained time. 



60 AGASSIZ. 

A mortal, built upon the antique plan, 
Brimful of lusty blood as ever ran, 
And taking life as simply as a tree ! 
To claim my foiled good-by let him appear, 

85 Large-limbed and human as I saw him near, 
Loosed from the stiffening uniform of fame ; 
<A.nd let me treat him largely : I should fear 
(If with too prying lens I chanced to err. 
Mistaking catalogue for character), 

00 His wise forefinger raised in smiling blame. 
Nor would I scant him with judicial breath 
And turn mere critic in an epitaph ; 
I choose the wheat, incurious of the chaff 
That swells fame living, chokes it after death, 

96 And would but memorize the shining half 
Of his large nature that was turned to me : 
Fain had I joined with those that honored him 
With eyes that darkened because his were dim. 
And now been silent : but it might not be. 

II. 

1. 

100 In some the genius is a thing apart, 
A pillared hermit of the brain. 
Hoarding with incommunicable art 
Its intellectual gain ; 
Man's web of circumstance and fate 
106 They from their perch of self observe, 

Indifferent as the figures on a slate 

Are to the planet's sun-swung curve 
Whose bright returns they calculate ; 

84. Since the poet could not be by Agassiz at the last. 



AGASSIZ. 61 

Their nice adjustment, part to part, 
110 Were shaken from its serviceable mood 
By unpremeditated stirs of heart 

Or jar of human neighborhood : 
Some find their natural selves, and only then, 
In furloughs of divine escape from men, 
115 And when, by that brief ecstasy left bare, 
Driven by some instinct of desire, 
They wander worldward, 't is to bhnk and stare, 
Like wild things of the wood about the fire, 
Dazed of the social glow they cannot share ; 
120 His nature brooked no lonely lair, 

But basked and bourgeoned in copartnery. 
Companionship, and open-windowed glee : 
He knew, for he had tried, 
Those speculative heights that lure 
125 The unpractised foot, impatient of a guide, 
Tow'rds ether too attenuately pure 
For sweet unconscious breath, though dear to pride. 

But better loved the foothold sure 
Of paths that wind by old abodes of men 
130 Who hope at last the churchyard's peace secure, 
And follow time-worn rules, that them suffice. 
Learned from their sires, traditionally wise. 
Careful of honest custom's how and when ; 
His mind, too brave to look on Truth askance, 
136 No more those habitudes of faith could share, 



118. Travellers in the wilderness find their camp-fires the attraction of the 
beasts that prowl about the camp. 

123. " Agassiz was a born metaphysician, and moreover had pursued severe 
studies in philosophy. Those who knew him well were constantly surprised at 
the ease with which he handled the more intricate problems of thought." 
Theodore Lyman, in Recollections of Agassiz, Atlantic Monthly, February, 
1874. 



62 AGASSIZ, 

But, tinged with sweetness of the old Swiss manse, 
Lingered around them still and fain would spare. 
Patient to spy a sullen egg for weeks, 
The enigma of creation to surprise, 

140 His truer instinct sought the life that speaks 
Without a mystery from kindly eyes ; 
In no self-woven silk of prudence wound, 
He by the touch of men was best inspired, 
And caught his native greatness at rebound 

145 From generosities itself had fired ; 

Then how the heat through every fibre ran. 
Felt in the gathering presence of the man, 
While the apt word and gesture came unbid ! 
Virtues and faults it to one metal wrought, 

150 Fined all his blood to thought, 

And ran the molten man in all he said or did. 
All TuUy's rules and all Quintilian's too 
He by the light of listening faces knew. 
And his rapt audience all unconscious lent 

155 Their own roused force to make him eloquent ; 
Persuasion fondled in his look and tone ; 
Our speech (with strangers prudish) he could bring 
To find new charms in accents not her own ; 
Her coy constraints and icy hindrances 

160 Melted upon his lips to natural ease. 

As a brook's fetters swell the dance of spring. 
Nor yet all sweetness : not in vain he wore. 
Nor in the sheath of ceremony, controlled 
By velvet courtesy or caution cold, 

165 That sword of honest anger prized of old, 

152. Tully is the now somewhat old-fashioned English way of referring to 
Marcus Tullius Cicero, whose book De Oratore and Quintilian's Institutiones 
Oratories were the most celebrated ancient works on rhetoric. 



AGASSIZ. 63 

But, with two-handed wrath, 
If baseness or pretension crossed his path, 
Struck once nor needed to strike more. 

2. 

His magic was not far to seek, — 
170 He was so human ! whether strong or weak, 
Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared, 
But sate an equal guest at every board : 
No beggar ever felt him condescend, 
No prince presume ; for still himself he bare 
175 At manhood's simple level, and where'er 
He met a stranger, there he left a friend. 
How large an aspect ! nobly unsevere. 
With freshness round him of Olympian cheer, 
Like visits of those earthly gods he came ; 
ISO His look, wherever its good-fortune fell, 
Doubled the feast without a miracle, 
And on the hearthstone danced a happier flame ; 
Philemon's crabbed vintage grew benign ; 
Amphitryon's gold-juice humanized to mne. 

III. 

1. 

186 The garrulous memories 

Gather again from all their far-flown nooks. 

Singly at first, and then by twos and threes, 

Then in a throng innumerable, as the rooks 

Thicken their twilight files 

183. For the stories of Philemon and Amphitryon, see Ovid*8 Metamorphoses, 
viii..631, and vi. 112. 



64 AGASSIZ. 

190 Tow'rds Tintern's gray repose of roofless aisles : 
Once more I see him at the table's head 
When Saturday her monthly banquet spread 

To scholars, poets, wits, 
All choice, some famous, loving things, not names, 

1S5 And so without a twinge at others' fames, 
Such, company as wisest moods befits. 
Yet with no pedant blindness to the worth 

Of undeliberate mirth. 
Natures benignly mixed of air and earth. 

200 Now with the stars and now with equal zest 
Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest. 

2. 

I see in vision the warm-lighted hall, 
The living and the dead I see again, 
And but one chair is empty of them all ; — 

205 'T is I that seem the dead : they all remain 
Immortal, changeless creatures of the brain : 
Well-nigh I doubt which world is real most, 
Of sense or spirit, to the truly sane ; 
In this abstraction it were light to deem 

210 Myself the figment of some stronger dream ; 
They are the real things, and I the ghost 
That glide unhindered through the solid door, 
Vainly for recognition seek from chair to chair. 
And strive to speak and am but futile air, 

215 As truly most of us are little more. 

190. Tintern Abbey, on the river Wye, is one of the most famous ruins in 
England. About this, as other ruins and shaded buildings, the rooks make 
their home. 

192. A club known as the Saturday Club has for many years met in Boston, 
and some of the prominent members are intimated in the following lines. 



AGASSIZ. 65 



Him most I see whom we most dearly miss, 
The latest parted thence, 

His features poised in genial armistice 

And armed neutrality of self-defence 
220 Beneath the forehead's walled preeminence 

While Tyro, plucking facts with careless reach, 

Settles off-hand our human how and whence ; 

The long-trained veteran scarcely wincing hears 

The infallible strategy of volunteers 
225 Making through Nature's walls its easy breach. 

And seems to learn where he alone could teach. 

Ample and ruddy, the room's end he fills 

As he our fireside were, our light and heat. 

Centre where minds diverse and various skills 
230 Find their warm nook and stretch unhampered 
feet; 

I see the firm benignity of face. 

Wide-smiling champaign without tameness sweet, 

The mass Teutonic toned to Gallic grace. 

The eyes whose sunshine runs before the lips 
235 While Holmes's rockets curve their long ellipse, 

And burst in seeds of fire that burst again 
To drop in scintillating rain. 



There too the face half-rustic, half-divine, 
Self-poised, sagacious, freaked with humor fine, 

216. Agassiz himself. 

238. Ralph Waldo Emerson. The words half -rustic, half-divine, recall Low- 
ell's earlier characterization in his Fable for Critics : — 

" A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range 
Has Olympus for one pole, for t' other the Exchange ; 
5 



66 AGASSIZ. 

240 Of him who taught us not to mow and mope 
About our fancied selves, but seek our scope 
In Nature's world and Man's, nor fade to hollow trope ; 
Listening with eyes averse I see him sit 
Pricked with the cider of the judge's wit 

245 (Ripe-hearted homebrew, fresh and fresh again), 
While the wise nose's firm-built aquihne 

Curves sharper to restrain 
The merriment whose most unruly moods 
Pass not the dumb laugh learned in listening woods 

260 Of silence-shedding pine ; 

Hard by is he whose art's consoling spell 
Has given both worlds a whiff of asphodel, 
His look still vernal 'mid the wintry ring 
Of petals that remember, not foretell, 

255 The paler primrose of a second spring. 

5. 

And more there are : but other forms arise 
And seen as clear, albeit with dimmer eyes : 
First he from sympathy still held apart 
By shrinking over-eagerness of heart, ' 
260 Cloud charged with searching fire, whose shadow's 
sweep 
Heightened mean things with sense of brooding ill, 
And steeped in doom familiar field and hill, — 
New England's poet, soul reserved and deep, 
November nature with a name of May, 

He seems, to my thinking (although I am afraid 
The comparison must, long ere this, have been made), 
A Plotinus Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist 
And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek by jowl coexist." 

244. Judge E. R. Hoar. 

251. Longfellow. 

258. Nathaniel Ha\^'thorne. He was buried in Concord, May 24, 1864. 



AGASSfZ. 67 

265 Whom high o'er Concord plains we laid to sleep, 
While the orchards mocked us in their white array, 
And building robins wondered at our tears. 
Snatched in his prime, the shape august 
That should have stood unbent 'neath fourscore years, 

270 The noble head, the eyes of furtive trust, 
All gone to speechless dust ; 
And he our passing guest, 
Shy nature, too, and stung with life's unrest, 
Whom we too briefly had but could not hold, 

275 Who brought ripe Oxford's culture to our board. 
The Past's incalculable hoard, 
Mellowed by scutcheoned panes in cloisters old, 
Seclusions ivy-hushed, and pavements sweet 
With immemorial lisp of musing feet ; 

280 Young head time-tonsured smoother than a friar's, 
Boy face, but grave with answerless desires, 
Poet in all that poets have of best 
But foiled with riddles dark and cloudy aims. 
Who now hath found sure rest, 

285 Not by still Isis or historic Thames, 

Nor by the Charles he tried to love with me. 
But, not misplaced, by Arno's hallowed brim. 
Nor scorned by Santa Croce's neighboring fames. 
Haply not mindless, wheresoe'er he be, 



272. Arthur Hugh Clough, an English poet, author of the Bothie of Tober- 
na-V%tolich, and editor of Dryden^s Translation of Plu(arch''s Lives, who 
came to this country in 1852 with some purpose of making it his home, but 
returned to England in less than a year. He lived while here in Cambridge, 
and strong attachments grew up between him and the men of letters in Cam- 
bridge and Concord. 

287. Clough died in his forty-third year, November 13, 1861, and was buried 
in the little Protestant cemetery outside the walls of Florence. 

288. Santa Croce is the church in Florence where many illustrious dead 
are buried, among them Michaelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, Alfieri. 



68 AGASSIZ. 

290 Of violets that to-day I scattered over him ; 
He, too, is there, 
After the good centurion fitly named, 
Whom learning dulled not, nor convention tamed, 
Shaking with burly mirth his hyacinthine hair, 
295 Our hearty Grecian of Homeric ways, 

Still found the surer friend where least he hoped the 
praise. 

6. 

Yea truly, as the sallowing years 
Fall from us faster, like frost-loosened leaves 
Pushed by the misty touch of shortening days, 
300 And that unwakened winter nears, 

'T is the void chair our surest guests receives, 
'T is lips long cold that give the warmest kiss, 
'T is the lost voice comes oftenest to our ears ; 
We count our rosary by the beads we miss : 
^306 To me, at least, it seemeth so. 

An exile in the land once found divine, 

While my starved fire burns low, 
And homeless winds at the loose casement whine 
Shrill ditties of the snow-roofed Apennine. 

IV. 

1. 

310 Now forth into the darkness all are gone, 
But memory, still unsated, follows on. 
Retracing step by step our homeward walk. 
With many a laugh among our serious talk, 

291. Cornelius Conway Felton, Professor of Greek Language and Litera- 
ture in Harvard College, and afterward President until his death in 1862. 



AGASSIZ. 69 

Across the bridge where, on the dimpling tide, 

316 The long red streamers from the windows glide. 
Or the dim western moon 
Rocks her skiff's image on the broad lagoon, 
And Boston shows a soft Venetian side 
In that Arcadian light when roof and tree, 

320 Hard prose by daylight, dream in Italy ; 
Or haply in the sky's cold chambers wide 
Shivered the winter stars, while all below, 
As if an end were come of hmnan ill. 
The world was wrapt in innocence of snow 

325 And the cast-iron bay was blind and still ; 
These were our poetry ; in him perhaps 
Science had barred the gate that lets in dream, 
And he would rather count the perch and bream 
Than with the current's idle fancy lapse ; 

330 And yet he had the poet's open eye 
That takes a frank delight in all it sees. 
Nor was earth voiceless, nor the mystic sky. 
To him the life-long friend of fields and trees : 
Then came the prose of the suburban street, 

336 Its silence deepened by our echoing feet. 
And converse such as rambling hazard finds ; 
Then he who many cities knew and many minds 
And men once world-noised, now mere Ossian forms 
Of misty memory, bade them live anew 

315. In walking over West Boston bridge at night one sees the lights from 
the houses on Beacon Street reflected in the water below and seeming to make 
one long light where flame and reflection join. 

337. See note to p. 40. 

338. Ossian was a fabulous Celtic warrior poet known chiefly through the 
pretended poems of Ossian of James MacPherson who lived in Scotland the 
latter half of the eighteenth century. There has been much controversy 
over the exact relation of Macpherson to the poems, which are Scotch crags 
looming out of Scotch mists. 



70 AGASSIZ. 

340 As when they shared earth's manifold delight, 
In shape, in gait, in voice, in gesture true. 
And, with an accent heightening as he warms, 
Would stop forgetful of the shortening night, 
Drop my confining arm, and pour profuse 

345 Much worldly wisdom kept for others' use, 
Not for his own, for he was rash and free. 
His purse or knowledge all men's, like the sea. 
Still can I hear his voice's shrilling might 
(With pauses broken, while the fitful spark 

350 He blew more hotly rounded on the dark 
To liint his features with a Rembrandt light) 
Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck, 
Or Cuvier's taller shade, and many more 
Whom he had seen, or knew from others' sight, 

355 And make them men to me as ne'er before : 
Not seldom, as the undeadened fibre stirred 
Of noble friendships knit beyond the sea, 
German or French tlu'ust by the lagging word, 
For a good leash of mother-tongues had he. 

360 At last, arrived at where our paths divide, 

" Good night ! " and, ere the distance grew too wide, 
" Good night ! " again ; and now with cheated ear 
I half hear his who mine shall never hear. 

2. 

Sometimes it seemed as if New England air 
365 For his large lungs too parsimonious were. 
As if those empty rooms of dogma drear 

352. Naturalists of renown. Oken was a remarkable and eccentric Swiss 
naturalist, 1779-1851 ; Humboldt a great naturalist and traveller, known by 
his Kosmos, 1769-1859 ; Lamarck, 1744-1829 ; Cuvier, in some respects the 
father of modern classification, and a valued adviser of Agassiz, 1769-1832 ; 
all these were personally known to Agassiz. 



AGASSIZ. 71 

Where the ghost shivers of a faith austere 
Counting the horns o'er of the Beast, 

Still scaring those whose faith in it is least, 
370 As if those snaps o' th' moral atmosphere 

That sharpen all the needles of the East, 
Had been to him like death. 

Accustomed to draw Europe's freer breath 
In a more stable element ; 
375 Nay, even our landscape, half the year morose, 

Our practical horizon grimly pent. 

Our air, sincere of ceremonious haze, 

Forcing hard outlines mercilessly close, 

Our social monotone of level days, 
380 Might make our best seem banishment, 

But it was nothing so ; 
Haply his instinct might divine, 

Beneath our drift of puritanic snow, 
The marvel sensitive and fine 
386 Of sanguinaria overrash to blow 

And warm its shyness in an air benign ; 

Well might he prize truth's warranty and pledge 

In the grim outcrop of our granite edge, 

The Hebrew fervor flashing forth at need 
390 In the stiff sons of Calvin's iron breed. 

As prompt to give as skilled to win and keep ; 

But, though such intuitions might not cheer. 

Yet life was good to him, and, there or here, 

With that sufficing joy, the day was never cheap ; 
395 Thereto his mind was its own ample sj^here, 

And, like those buildings great that through the year 

Carry one temperature, his nature large 

Made its own climate, nor could any marge . 

397. This is said of St. Peter's in Rome. 



72 AGASSIZ. 

Traced by convention stay him from his bent : 
400 He had a habitude of mountain air ; 
He brought wide outlook where he went, 

And could on sunny uplands dwell 
Of prospect sweeter than the pastures fair 
High-hung of viny Neufchatel, 
406 Nor, surely, did he miss 

Some pale, imaginary bliss 
Of earlier sights whose inner landscape still was Swiss. 

V. 

1. 

I cannot think he wished so soon to die 
With all his senses full of eager heat, 
410 And rosy years that stood expectant by 

To buckle the winged sandals on their feet, — 
He that was friends with earth, and all her sweet 
Took with both hands unsparingly : 
Truly this life is precious to the root, 
415 And good the feel of grass beneath the foot ; 
To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom. 

Tenants in common with the bees, 
And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of 

trees, 
Is better than long waiting in the tomb ; 
420 Only once more to feel the coming spring 
As the birds feel it when it makes them sing, 

Only once more to see the moon 
Through leaf-fringed abbey-arches of the elms 
Curve her mild sickle in the West 
428 Sweet with the breath of hay-cocks, were a boon 

411. See note to p. 56, 1. 12. 



AGASSIZ. 73 

Worth any promise of soothsayer realms 
Or casual hope of bemg elsewhere blest ; 

To take December by the beard 
And crush the creaking snow with springy foot, 
430 While overhead the North's dumb streamers shoot, 
Till Winter fawn upon the cheek endeared ; 
Then the long evening ends 
Lingered by cozy chimney-nooks. 
With high companionship of books, 
43B Or slippered talk of friends 

And sweet habitual looks. 
Is better than to stop the ears with dust : 
Too soon the spectre comes to say, " Thou must! " 

2. 

When toil-crooked hands are crost upon the breast, 
440 They comfort us with sense of rest ; 

They must be glad to lie forever still ; 

Their work is ended with their day ; 
Another fills their room ; 't is the World's ancient 
way 

Whether for good or ill ; 
446 But the deft spinners of the brain. 

Who love each added day and find it gain, 
Them overtakes the doom 
To snap the half -grown flower upon the loom 
(Trophy that was to be of life-long pain), 
460 The thread no other skill can ever knit again. 

'T was so with him, for he was glad to live, 
'T was doubly so, for he left work begun ; 
Could not this eagerness of Fate forgive 
Till all the allotted flax was spun? 
466 It matters not : for go at night or noon, 



74 AGASSIZ. 

A friend, whene'er he dies, has died too soon, 
And, once we hear the hopeless He is dead, 
So far as flesh hath knowledge, all is said. 



VI. 



I seem to see the black procession go : 

460 That crawling prose of death too well I know. 
The vulgar paraphrase of glorious woe ; 
I see it wind through that unsightly grove, 
Once beautiful, but long defaced 
With granite permanence of cockney taste 

465 And all those grim disfigurements we love : 

There, then, we leave him : Him ? such costly waste 
Nature rebels at : and it is not true 
Of those most precious parts of him we knew : 
Could we be conscious but as dreamers be, 

470 'T were sweet to leave this shifting life of tents 
Sunk in the changeless calm of Deity ; 
Nay, to be mingled with the elements, 
The fellow-servant of creative powers. 
Partaker in the solemn year's events, 

475 To share the work of busy-fingered hours, 
To be night's silent almoner of dew. 
To rise again in plants and breathe and grow. 
To stream as tides the ocean cavern through, 
Or with the rapture of great winds to blow 

480 About earth's shaken coignes, were. not a fate 
To leave us all-disconsolate ; 
Even endless slumber in the sweetening sod 
Of charitable earth 

462. Mount Auburn cemetery in Cambridge, where Agassiz lies. 



AGASSIZ. 75 

That takes out all our mortal stains, 
486 And makes us clearlier neighbors of the clod 

Methinks were better worth 
Than the poor fruit of most men's wakeful pains, 
The heart's insatiable ache : 
But such was not his faith, 
430 Nor mine : it may be he had trod 

Outside the plain old path of God thus spake^ 
But God to him was very God, 
And not a visionary wraith 
Skulking in mm-ky corners of the mind, 
496 And he was sure to be 

Somehow, somewhere, imperishable as He, 
Not with His essence mystically combined. 
As some high spirits long, but whole and free, 
A perfected and conscious Agassiz. 
600 And such I figure him : the wise of old 

Welcome and own him of their peaceful fold. 
Not truly with the guild enrolled 
Of him who seeking inward guessed 
Diviner riddles than the rest, 
808 And groping in the darks of thought 

Touched the Great Hand and knew it not ; 
He rather shares the daily light. 
From reason's charier fountains won. 
Of his great chief, the slow-paced Stagyrite, 
510 And Cuvier clasps once more his long-lost son. 

2. 

The shape erect is prone : forever stilled 

The winning tongue ; the forehead's high-piled heap, 

503. Plato. 

509. Aristotle, so-called from his birthplace of Stagira in Macedonia. 



76 AG AS SI Z. 

A cairn which every science helped to build, 
Unvalued will its golden secrets keep : 

515 He knows at last if Life or Death be best : 
Wherever he be flown, whatever vest 
The being hath put on which lately here 
So many-friended was, so full of cheer 
To make men feel the Seeker's noble zest, 

620 We have not lost him all ; he is not gone 
To the dumb herd of them that wholly die ; 
The beauty of his better self lives on 
In minds he touched with fire, in many an eye 
He trained to Truth's exact severity ; 

625 He was a Teacher : why be grieved for him 
Whose living word still stimulates the air ? 
In endless files shall loving scholars come 
The glow of his transmitted touch to share, 
And trace his features with an eye less dim 

530 Than ours whose sense familiar wont makes numb. 

Floeence, Italy, February, 1874.. 



APPENDIX. 



[Lowell's poem on Agassiz presents many aspects of 
that remarkable man. The stimulus which he gave in this 
country to scientific research was followed by results in other 
departments of human learning, for the method employed in 
scientific study finds an application in history and literature 
also. In the study of literature the first lesson is in the 
power of seeing what lies before the student on the printed 
page, and the following sketch, which was published shortly 
after Agassiz's death, is given here, both because it is so 
entertaming an account of a student's experience, and because 
it points so clearly to the secret of all success in study, both 
of science and of literature.] 

IN THE LABORATORY WITH AGASSIZ. 

BY A FOKMEa PUPIL. 

It was more than fifteen years ago that I entered the laboratory of 
Professor Agassiz, and told him I had enrolled my name in the 
scientific school as a student of natural history. He asked me a few 
questions about my object in coming, my antecedents generally, the 
mode in which I afterwards proposed to use the knowledge I might 
acquire, and finally, whether I wished to study any special branch. 
To the latter I replied that while I wished to be well grounded in all 
departments of zoology, I purposed to devote myself specially to in- 
sects. 

"When do 3'ou wish to begin? " he asked. 

•'Now," I replied. 

This seemed to please him, and with an energetic "Very well," 
he reached from a shelf a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol. 

"Take this^sA," said he, "and look at it; we call it a Hsemulon ; 
bv and bv I will ask what vou have seen." 



78 APPENDIX. 

With that he left me, but in a moment returned with explicit in- 
structions as to the care of the object intrusted to me. 

" No man is fit to be a naturalist," said he, "who does not know 
how to take care of specimens." 

I was to keep the fish before me in a tin tray, and occasionally 
moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar, always taking care to 
replace the stopper tightly. Those were not the days of ground glass 
stoppers, and elegantly shaped exhibition jars: all the old students 
will recall the huge, neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax- 
besmeared corks, half eaten by insects and begrimed with cellar dust. 
Entomology was a cleaner science than ichthyology, but the example 
of the professor who had unhesitatingly plunged to the bottom of the 
jar to produce the fish was infectious; and though this alcohol had 
"a very ancient and fish-like smell," I really dared not show any 
aversion within these sacred precincts, and treated the alcohol as 
though it were pure water. Still I was conscious of a passing feeling 
of disappointment, for gazing at a fish did not commend itself to an 
ardent entomologist. My friends at home, too, were annoyed, when 
they discovered that no amount of eaiL de cologne would drown the 
perfume which haunted me like a shadow. 

In ten minutes I had seen all that could be seen in that fish, and 
started in search of the professor, who had, however, left the museum ; 
and when I returned, after lingering over some of the odd animals 
stored in the upper apartment, my specimen was dry all over. I 
dashed the fluid over the fish as if to resuscitate the beast from a 
fainting-fit, and looked with anxiety for a return of the normal, sloppy 
appearance. This little excitement over, nothing was to be done but 
return to a steadfast gaze at my mute companion. Half an hour 
passed, — an hour, — another hour; the fish began to look loathsome. 
I turned it over and. around; looked it in the face, — ghastly; from 
behind, beneath, above, sideways, at a three quarters' view, — just as 
ghastly. I was in despair ; at an early hour I concluded that lunch 
was necessary ; so, with infinite relief, the fish was carefully replaced 
in the jar, and for an hour I was free. 

On my return, I learned that Professor Agassiz had been at the 
museum, but had gone and would not return for several hours. My 
fellow-students were too busy to be disturbed by continued conver- 
sation. Slowly I drew forth that hideous fish, and with a feeling of 
desperation again looked at it. I might not use a magnif^'ing glass ; 
instruments of all kinds were interdicted. My two hands, my two 
eyes, and the fish ; it seemed a most limited field. I pushed my finger 
down its thtoat to feel how sharp the teeth were. I began to count the 
scales in the different rows until I was convinced that that was non- 



APPENDIX. 79 

sense. At last a happy thought struck me — I would draw the fish; 
and now with surprise I began to discover new features in the creature. 
Just then the professor returned. 

"That is right," said he; "a pencil is one of the best of eyes. I 
am glad to notice, too, that you keep your specimen wet and yonr 
bottle corked." 

With these encouraging words, he added, — 

"AVell, whatis it like?" 

He listened attentively to my brief rehearsal of the structure of parts 
whose names were still unknown to me : the fringed gill-arches and 
movable operculum ; the pores of the head, fleshy lips, and lidless 
eyes; the lateral line, the spinous fins, and forked tail; the compressed 
and arched body. When I had finished, he waited as if expecting 
more, and then, with an air of disappointment,— 

"You have not looked very carefully ; why," he continued, more 
earnestly', "3'ou have n't even seen one of the most conspicuous fea- 
tures of the animal, which is as plainly before your eyes as the fish 
itself; look again, look again ! " and he left me to my misery. 

I was piqued; I was mortified. Still more of that wretched fish? 
But now I set myself to my task with a will, and discovered one new 
thing after another, until I saw how just the professor's criticism had 
been. The afternoon passed quickly, and when, toward its close, the 
professor inquired, — 

"Do you see it yet? " 

" No," I replied, " I am certain I do not, but I see how little I saw 
before." 

"That is next best," said he, earnestly, "but I won't hear you 
now; put away your fish and go home; perhaps you will be ready 
with a better answer in the morning. I will examine you before you 
look at the fish." 

This was disconcerting ; not only must I think of my fish all night, 
studying, without the object before me, what this unknown but most 
visible feature might be, but also, without reviewing my new discov- 
eries, I must give an exact account of them the next da}'. I had a bad 
memory ; so I walked home by Charles River in a distracted state, 
with my two perplexities. 

The cordial greeting from the professor the next morning was reas- 
suring ; here was a man who seemed to be quite as anxious as I, that 
I should see for myself what he saw. 

"Do you perhaps mean," I asked, " that the fish has symmetrical 
sides with paired organs ? " 

His thoroughly pleased, " Of course, of course ! " repaid the wake- 
ful hours of the previous night. After he had discoursed most happily 



80 APPENDIX. 

and enthusiastically — as he always did — upon the importance of this 
point, I ventured to ask what I should do next. 

*'0h, look at your fish! " he said, and left me again to my own 
devices. In a little more than an hour he returned and heard my new 
catalogue. 

"That is good, that is good!" he repeated; "but that is not all; 
go on; " and so for three long days he placed that fish before my eyes, 
forbidding me to look at anything else, or to use any artificial aid. 
"Look, look, look," was his repeated injunction. 

This was the best entomological lesson I ever had, — a lesson whose 
influence has extended to the details of every subsequent study; a 
legacy the professor has left to me, as he left it to many others, of 
inestimable value, which we could not buy, with which we cannot 
part. 

A year afterwards some of us were amusing ourselves with chalking 
outlandish beasts upon the museum blackboard. We drew prancing 
star -fishes ; frogs in mortal combat; hydra-headed worms; stately 
crawfishes,, standing on their tails, bearing aloft umbrellas ; and gro- 
tesque fishes with gaping mouths and staring eyes. The professor 
came in shortly after, and was as amused as any at our experiments. 
He looked at the fishes. 

"Haemulons, every one of them," he said; "Mr. drew them." 

True ; and to this day, if I attempt a fish, I can draw nothing but 
Hfemulons. 

The fourth day a second fish of the same group was placed beside 
the first, and I was bidden to point out the resemblances and differences 
between the two ; another and another followed, until the entire famil3' 
lay before me, and a whole legion of jars covered the table and sur- 
rounding shelves ; the odor had become a pleasant perfume : and even 
now, the sight of an old, six-inch, worm-eaten cork brings fragrant 
memories ! 

The whole group of Hsemulons was thus brought in review ; and, 
whether engaged upon the dissection of the internal organs, the prep- 
aration and examination of the bony frame-work, or the description of 
the various parts, Agassiz's training in the method of observing facts 
and their orderly arrangement was ever accompanied by the urgent 
exhortation not to be content with them. 

"Facts are stupid things," he would say, " until brought into con- 
nection with some general law." 

At the end of eight months it was almost with reluctance that I 
left these friends and turned to insects ; but what I had gained by this 
outside experience has been of greater value than j-ears of later 
investigation in my favorite groups. 



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